What’s RescueTime?

RescueTime is a time management &amp; Productivity software company founded in 2008. The RescueTime app runs in the background of your apparatus measuring monitoring and automatically categorizing your own activity.

RescueTime is a free app with a premium upgrade That allows attributes and more reporting like time input. It offers a reporting dash with your information sliced, diced and sorted into graphs that will assist you manage your time.

The program is based on Peter Drucker’s (the famous Management consultant) maxim that”what gets measured, gets managed.”

RescueTime takes time’s manual monitoring So that you actually track your own time so that and makes it automatic and painless .

That said, there are dozens and dozens of Productivity &amp; time management programs online. What are the real pros &amp; cons of RescueTime? Here is what I have noticed through the years.

Disclosure — I receive referral fees Mentioned on this website. Any info or opinions are based on my experience as a customer or consultant to a customer. Rescue Time Offer Amazon

Rescuing Your Period

RescumeTime is a productivity tool at the, to reiterate Feel that it helps your skills improve. It collects data about the apps and sites you use, and then creates reports based on that information.

To get started, you install a and create an account Desktop program on your personal computer (s) and a mobile app on Android devices. There is no iOS program because the operating system prevents RescueTime from amassing the data it needs to carry out its purpose. Those apps quietly and invisibly track which apps you use and which sites you visit, in addition to the amount of time spent on them.

The hard nut to crack is the Way to make sense of all that information. To get the best results, you have to customize your accounts from the RescueTime website and tell the app more about what you believe productive versus unproductive activity. The more you fine-tune it to your specific circumstances, the greater your results. As an instance, someone who operates in the finances industry may classify reading financial news on sites such as MarketWatch and FT.com as a productivity job, whereas for me, that’s an unproductive use of time.

You can categorize every app and website on a 5-point Scale of quite productive, productive, impartial, unproductive, and incredibly unproductive. You can also categorize activity into perform categorizes. By way of example, I list Google Docs as quite productive, and that I categorized it as Writing, which is a subcategory of Design and Composition. Looking at Redfin.com is very distracting when I am trying to function, and I’ve categorized it .

From the desktop app, there is a simple set of controllers That allows you to pause RescueTime for a quarter hour, 1 hour, or until tomorrow, providing you easy access to switching the program off for breaks or days when you wrap up early.

Privacy

When confronted with RescueTime’s proposition–We will track All you do and give you insights about your customs! –some people may, justifiably, be worried about their privacy and the security of information on their hardware. Should you work with sensitive information online or store sensitive information in your own computers and mobile devices, you’ll want to browse RescueTime’s privacy and safety statements carefully.

For everybody RescueTime’s privacy policy Includes a summary at the very top, only a few condensed lines that are worth reading.

If your concerns are somewhat more relaxed and You Just Don’t Want RescueTime tracking you on the weekend, you’ve got control over the days and times the program monitors your behavior. It is simple to set it to just watch your activity from 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Monday through Friday, or whatever program suits you.

Reports

I have used RescueTime for decades, and I do not check my Daily productivity reports. I love to let the service run in the background so that when I do want to find a better image of how I’ve been spending my time, a good quantity of information is awaiting me.

While I do go through the reports, however, they’re Magnificent. I love the variety, providing you get numerous methods of understanding your productivity and habits, from bar graphs and pie graphs that show lump amounts of action, to line items of software you used.

1 simple but effective piece of information RescueTime Provides is an analysis of when during the day you are inclined to be the most successful. I was not surprised to see that my brain peaks in the morning and slacks off after 2:00 p.m., as that fits fairly well with everything I understand about my customs. If you have never analyzed your productivity, however, that may be a beneficial revelation for you, one that might help you schedule your times more .

The more time you use RescueTime Premium, the more applicable the Data becomes, because you may view your statistics by day, week, month, or year. And as you might expect, it is possible to toggle which days and times RescueTime records your action so it turns off automatically on weekends, for instance. Rescue Time Offer Amazon

Additional Capabilities

Much of the value you get from RescueTime comes from that which You make of the information and how you use that information to influence your own behavior. Changing behaviour is tough, but getting rich insights does not have to be.

Among those ways RescueTime makes it easy to understand how To interpret all the data that it collects is using a Productivity Pulse score. This daily evaluation, shown as a percentage, comes in calculating the percentage of time spent very productive, effective, impartial, unproductive, and very unproductive tasks. To be clear, no one is advocating you aim for a 100 percent Productivity Pulse score.

A RescueTime blog post describing the productivity Score notes that the score is 67 percent, and the on site average is 79 percent. The majority of people want to do some job which isn’t considered”very productive” during daily. The entire purpose of using RescueTime is to help you figure out how to concentrate on productive and very productive tasks if you need to and possibly save less productive activities for times as soon as your ability to concentrate has been waning anyway.

Tasks are not the same thing as distractions. RescueTime has a smart and straightforward attribute for curbing behaviour that is unwanted, such as getting sucked into sites , also. A feature named FocusTime, when enabled, blocks your ability to access. It requires a little setup and personalization, but after it is ready to set up, it is quite powerful. As an example, let’s say you want to to finish a record, and also to make progress on it, you need to focus hardcore for the next thirty minutes. It can prevent you from taking a look posting on Twitter, checking sports scores, or whatever other sites and actions, and switch on FocusTime you deem distracting.

The RescueTime mobile app has a setting that will Mechanically silence your phone whenever you empower FocusTime. Likewise, you may set up other automation with the support of third party providers IFTTTFree at iTunes Store and Zapier to block or silence additional distractions. For example, you may make a rule with IFTTT (it stands for”if this, then that”) that states,”If I empower FocusTime, then mechanically set my Slack standing to busy.”

RescueTime also gives you the option to log time pc Idle moment. Any time RescueTime notices the computer has been idle for many minutes at a row, so it pops up a dialog asking if you’re in a meeting, on the phone, taking break, etc, and permits you to categorize the idle time accordingly.

Pros of RescueTime

Here is some of the advantages of using RescueTime Over solutions. Rescue Time Offer Amazon

Feature Set

At its heart, RescueTime does something — track time. It’s not super unique When you look at it like this. Technically, you could do some of the dozens of apps that are free or this with a spreadsheet on the internet.

But RescueTime’s feature set is unique because of How it monitors time and exactly what it does with all the information (aka, you you’ll really use).

RescueTime’s other features focus on producing their Core attribute. Like time-tracking &amp; charging for 15, they don’t try to include on features. They don’t attempt to enter any side businesses.

They do have Feature in an intriguing manner. The Get Focused! From running when selected feature blocks apps.

They have alarms and goals that Permit You to pick What when X happens, you want to occur — and RescueTime will do that based on what it’s monitoring.

I love how RescueTime does Offline Time Tracking. Rather than having to search and add it in 100% manually, you select a time interval that is unlogged and fill in the blank.

You can also customize the buttons to make logging Offline time easy and quick.

It is a minimalist feature but that What makes it great. It is straightforward, simple and well-done.

Pricing and Plans

RescueTime provides two tiers of support: Lite (free) and Premium ($9 a month or $72 annually ). Businesses or organizations that are looking to utilize RescueTime across a bunch of individuals pay the same rate as Premium subscribers.

RescueTime Lite offers Tracked her or his time. The app monitors which sites and programs you use, and also how much time you spend in or on each of these. You may categorize every app and website you are using on a Productive/Unproductive scale, and RescueTime creates a few basic reports showing how you spend your own time. Lite members can place weekly objectives, such as”spend hours per week on productive tasks and fewer than Y moments on faulty products.” It’s possible to find a report email. For reports, you’re limited to a history, nevertheless.

Paying subscribers get everything from the Lite program that is free, Plus features and reports, including an infinite history. Premium comes with alarms you can enable for if you hit daily goals. You can more correctly log time spent away from the computer, noting if you’re in a meeting, on a phone call, or simply out to lunch. Additionally, there is a Get Focused option, which lets you block websites you place. Rescue Time Offer Amazon

Assessing RescueTime’s cost to that of other apps Requires an open mind as programs do exactly what RescueTime does. Qbserve is among the programs you may find, and it charges a flat one-time fee of $40.

We could look at traditional time-tracking Programs for freelancers who include tools for invoices. HarvestFree at Harvest is a decent example. At $12 per individual a month for Premium, it costs more than RescueTime, but it has a very clear return on investment because it helps to ensure more accurate billing. How you’ll interpret RescueTime’s reports and make better use of your time as a result is much less clear.

Toggl, another Classic app that’s Popular among freelancers, costs $9 a month, and it also provides you tools for tracking time spent on jobs with the usual end goal of charging customers. Toggl doesn’t include its own invoicing tools, but it has several integration options for linking with invoicing services.

A Couple of apps are closer to RescueTime in what they have to Offer, such as Slife, although they tend to have fewer attributes even if they are free (and Slife is).

Either way — RescueTime is a no-brainer pricing-wise. It is totally free to use.

And if the attributes save you just One hour each month it’s paid for itself even if you are earning US minimum wage.

RescueTime is.

App Quality

A problem with tracking programs of all kinds is That they must be on. The”always on” attribute can cause performance problems on laptops &amp; desktop computers. Battery issues can be caused by it on mobile devices.

But in my own experience, RescueTime induces neither. It’s running in my Windows PC, my Macbook Pro, along with also my Nexus 5x mobile phone from startup. I’ve never monitored any functionality or battery issues to the app.

It is well-built and lightweight.

I like the fact that the mobile app doesn’t demand Heaps of ridiculous permissions. It demands access to use data, but does not try to monitor emails, contacts, location, or any of the privacy that is typical violating permissions programs request.

It is quick to install and syncs with an internet dashboard. It pulls in data from all sources and crunches the data quickly if you are on the Premium plan or from next day to the free plan.

Reporting

What is the point of information if you can not interpret it ? Rescue Time Offer Amazon

RescueTime’s reports solves that problem — and in Ways is the point of working with the program.

RescueTime’s Dashboard uses colorful bar and Pie charts to reveal just what you are (and are not) doing.

You can opt to receive emails reports every day, Week or even month.

And on Top of That, you can dig to the Reporting with numerous filters and overlays to find your customs out.

It to determine the amount of Time that each task happens.

When I trying to find a marketing agency in Atlanta — The time monitored to Gchats and Instant Messages was astonishing. It changed my job supervisors , but also processes not just for me.

Now that I’m on my own — I can see the exact time that I devote to jobs that matter. I am able to construct my day .

And just to reiterate — all the reports are Built-in to the computer software. The Dashboard is on my default — and reports that are innovative are pre-built.

It’s all powerful, seamless and fast so that you When assessing your time are wasting time.

Integrations

One of the key selling points of RescueTime is their feature set minimalism. They do one thing and they do it nicely.

That said — many people using their merchandise Have software requirements that are time-based. Whether it’s staff time tracking, billing, project management or something else — your time demands do not cease with measuring tracking and categorization.

To solve that problem, RescueTime’s applications Integrates with a range of other software. They’ve an API and direct integrations with software that is shared.

Whether you are a freelancer attempting to incorporate Time monitoring into even a project manager that must collate team member’s time or invoicing software like FreshBooks, RescueTime will probably integrate with this.

Cons of RescueTime

Like any applications RescueTime is Perfect nor is it the ideal fit for everybody. Here is some pitfalls that I’ve noticed through the years. Rescue Time Offer Amazon

Effectiveness vs. Efficiency

If you do the wrong thing for 18 hours per day, Daily with perfect focus — you are doing the thing that is incorrect.

The most important Element in time management is to Work on the things — the core 20 percent of time input that will generate 80% of your results.

And that. RescueTime Can’t solve that issue.

In fact, in certain ways, RescueTime can hurt your By pushing you towards efficient doing over research, approach and planning Attempts.

If efficacy is your core issue RescueTime is not for you. It’ll only make matters worse.

Rather, I’d recommend reading some of them books.

Wrap-up

RescueTime has been an invaluable tool for me personally. It’s not for everybody and has some attribute quirks and pitfalls.

Nevertheless, the thing it is provided is perspective. It’s easy to believe you”work a ton” or are”not addicted to a phone” or”spend as much time composing” or are”barely ever on Facebook.”

But the information does not lie. And using RescueTime to Get accurate time data onto your time will be able to assist you place your life in perspective and literally conserve your own time. Rescue Time Offer Amazon